Not With a Bang But With a Whimper
by IantojJackh
Summary: Things go from bad to worse when Ianto's secret in the basement is revealed. Cyberwoman AU. Warning for character death


**Title**: Not With a Bang but a Whimper  
**Author**: **iantojjackh**  
**Beta**: **timelordshines** thank you for pushing me to make this all that it is.  
**Summary**: Things go very wrong when Ianto's secret in the basement is revealed. Cyberwoman AU  
**Spoilers**: Cyberwoman  
**Characters**: Team Torchwood and Lisa  
**Warnings**: Character death and destruction  
**Notes**: This originally started with the intention of being a piece for a tw100 several weeks ago, but the plot bunnies took over.

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**_Not With a Bang but a Whimper_**

Ianto woke to every inch of his body screaming in agony. The cold metal fused to his skin and the whirring sounds of nearby machines, gave him an idea of what was happening.

"Lisa, you don't have to do this…" He paused, knowing his voice did not sound right...it was too female.

"My Ianto. It's going to be okay. We'll be together soon." It was most disconcerting to hear the words come from his own mouth. "Just rest, you'll be back in your body in no time and we will both be back the way we were before the attack. Do you trust me my love?" Lisa!Ianto played on his humanity. It was a weakness that was too easy to exploit. Her humanity had been long lost and replaced by something hell-bent on planetary annihilation.

Ianto nodded, knowing he could go nowhere hooked up as he was to all the machines. His eyes closed as one of the daily doses of morphine was injected into the metal body.

In his next conscious moment he heard his own voice yelling and crying. "I tried to save her. There is nothing else I could do! She's turning into a monster. Lisa...she killed Dr. Tanizaki. She tried to kill me. I don't know if she is in there anymore." The tears were a nice touch to get them believing she was Ianto and he was witnessing the rapid deterioration of the woman he loved.

"It's going to be okay Lamb," Gwen put a hand on Ianto's shoulders. "Let's get some air," she offered the young man as much support she could.

Lisa!Ianto nodded numbly as she followed Gwen away from the bowels of the hub. Divide and conquer was the best mode of attack with these people. Together they were strong, separate they were strong too, but it was nothing that could not easily be handled.

Gwen tightened her hold on Ianto and kissed his cheek when they heard the commotion from the room they had left

"Don't come any closer," Jack's voice came through loud and clear.

"Leave her alone," Owen's protective voice came next.

Lisa!Ianto and Gwen could not hear what the man trapped in the metal woman's body was trying to say.

Finally, six shots rang out, two from each of the guns of Tosh, Owen and Jack. Lisa!Ianto broke out into a fit of maniacal laugher, "I've won." she chanted several times over. "This will be my new base of operations."

Gwen did not even have time for a stunned expression as Lisa!Ianto electrocuted the woman she saw as the weakest link of the group.

Owen was next when he went to check on Ianto's mental and physical wellbeing. The look of shock and betrayal made the humanoid cyberman laugh with unhinged glee.

Next was Toshiko who met her end with a very grisly flair. It was so gruesome that the Captain, who had seen it all, almost lost the contents of his stomach when he walked in at the end of dastardly deed. It was a very undignified end for such a dignified woman.

"Ianto?" Jack asked, not wanting to believe what was in front of him. He found it difficult believe that Ianto had been lying for months, but murder was something he knew in his heart of hearts the young man was incapable of.

"Ianto is no longer here. Emotions made him weak and he had to be deleted," the voice was Ianto's, but everything else was wrong.

"Lisa?" It was the only other option.

"This mind originally was hers, but she too was weak. There is not enough of her left to say I am her. Her body was weak, too damaged but this one is healthy and strong." Blue eyes carefully studied the interesting specimen before it. "The one who used to inhabit this body, he cared for you a great deal. Tell me how does it feel to know you killed him?"

Jack flinched as the thing that now inhabited the body of Ianto Jones looked him over, as if scanning him. His skin tingled as the probe was both mental and physical. "Stop it!" Jack yelled as he tried to break the connection.

"Oh! You cared for him too. More than you want to admit to even yourself. How interesting. He betrayed you and you still care. That is so human. What is this?" The blue eyes lit up in a way he only saw when Ianto got really excited.

Jack tried to move, but it was as if some force held him in place. He wondered how was this possible that the cybermen had been able to transfer their consciousness over to someone who did not have any kind of cybernetics installed in them or had Ianto not been aware of something that had been done to him at Canary Wharf?

That is when the searing pain started, blinding Jack in agony and soon his body started convulsing. Next came the darkness as consciousness slipped away dragging him away unwillingly.

"Yes, you will do quite well. A body that can't die. This is exactly what we need to take over. The world will be mine." Those were the last words Jack heard before he passed out.

The day felt like Jack's worst nightmare times infinity come to life. First there was the betrayal by the one person that he had started to open up to. The first person in a long time that he had truly felt he could trust, maybe even love. Then, just when he thought things couldn't get any worse they did. Jack's whole team had been systematically and gruesomely erased. The images would forever haunt the immortal.

The twenty first century was when it all was supposed to change, but Jack never thought the change would be humans being wiped from existence. The fifty-first century man knew the day would eventually be upon him, but he thought that was not for another thousand years. The history books neglected to tell about the invasion of Cybermen or was this not supposed to happen and history was in the process of rewriting itself?

The moment the Doctor called him wrong played over in Jack's head like repeated nails on a chalk board. The time lord had been right all along; his face would be synonymous with the destruction of mankind. You can't get more wrong than that.

When Jack finally came to things did not feel right. Things did not look right. He heard a voice at the back of his mind, repeating over and over.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Ianto?"

"Jack? You can hear me? How..? It doesn't matter. I'm sorry Jack. I didn't mean for any of this to happen." Ianto's voice sounded small and defeated. He never gave up hope that the Lisa whom he loved was still alive, but tonight proved that love blinded Ianto what had been in front of him the whole time. He had not been ready to give up on the woman who showed him that it was possible to overcome the hardships of one's past and make a better life for yourself. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he started to cry and his sobs wracked his spent body.

Jack did not expect to feel tears fall upon his cheeks. They were accompanied by the overwhelming sense of remorse and pain. Earlier, Jack could not understand why Ianto had betrayed his trust but now he felt as if he would have done the same had the roles been reversed. Jack reached up to dry the fallen tears when he noticed the hand was not his. "How is this possible?" Jack stared at the hand in front of him, watching in horrified amazement.

"I don't know. Wait? Are you in my body with me?" Ianto looked around and saw he was the only one in the cell.

"Fuck," Ianto muttered, thinking that the last bits of his sanity had finally vanished and he was hallucinating Jack's voice.

"It's not like I haven't been inside you before," Jack looked at his reflection in the plastic cell door. "But not quite like this. You aren't imagining this. This is really happening." He examined the face that looked back at him. The face he had come to know quite well in the last six months. The one he had spilt a lot of his secrets to whilst was keeping the biggest secret of them all.

"That's just what a hallucination would say," Ianto countered. He pulled at his hair and moved about the cell with jerky motions, trying to comprehend what was happening. The Cyberman had played him for the biggest fool, playing on the human connection. Had this been its plan the entire time? Biding time so it could work out a way to convert without the use of cybernetics?

"Shit. But she took over your mind. You tried to tell us that it was you in her body, but I didn't believe you. I'm sorry." Jack's voice cracked. He hardly ever apologised for anything, so it was big for him to do so. A hug seemed like the right thing to do, but with one body between them it would be a little awkward.

"When we shot you did your mind transfer back to your body?" This was all new to Jack, not something he had experienced in his long life. He could not read Ianto's mind to know exactly what he was thinking but he could feel what the Welshman felt: the grief, the pain, the guilt and it was all overwhelming for Jack. He felt his chest, well Ianto's chest, tighten and the breath felt as if it was being sucked from his lungs.

"No. Part of me must have been left after the transfer. I saw what it did to the others. They are all dead, Jack and it's my fault. I couldn't stop it...her. I thought I could save Lisa, but there was not enough left of her to save, was there?" Ianto started to hyperventilate as the horror of what the Cyberman did in his body, as the part of his mind trapped with her struggled and failed to take control, sunk in. He had tried in vain to stop her, but could only watch in horror as she murdered his friends.

"Tosh, I'm so sorry." Tears poured down once again. Ianto was sorry for everyone's death, but hers had been too grotesque to even fathom. The bile and vomit spewed forth with such force it splattered against the cell wall, splashing back on Ianto's shirt. The edges of his vision started to blacken and seconds later unconsciousness caused Ianto/Jack to crash onto the thin bunk.

Almost ten minutes passed before the men regained consciousness. The cell reeked of vomit and now urine. They must have peed while unconscious, which only added to Ianto's distress.

"I'm sorry, Ianto. It's okay," Jack tried to reassure Ianto.

"How can we get out of here? There is no way out of these cells." Ianto needed to take his mind off the embarrassment. It made him feel weak and it had been drilled into his head as child that showing weakness was not something to be tolerated.

"How do you know?"

"I studied the schematics of the cells. They are meant to be escape proof."

"So we take me out when he comes to feed us."

That time would never come. No food and no water was a death sentence. For the first few days they tried everything to get out of the cell, but nothing worked.

Eventually exhaustion took over and the two men sharing one body could do nothing but lie and contemplate the eventual end.

Jack knew how painful death by starvation and dehydration could be and with him no longer in an immortal body it meant that his end was near. His curse was about to come to an end. It was a day he had wished for, but not like this.

"Ianto, why are you so quiet?"

"There's not much left to say."

"There is always something to say."

"You don't like the quiet, do you?"

"No. Was it all a lie?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What happened between us. Was it just so you could try to save Lisa?"

"Does it matter now? You know this goes against everything people say about you."

"I do have feelings, contrary to popular belief."

"It started out that way. Then it changed and I hate myself for it. I'm sorry for using you, Jack. I never expected to begin to start to fall for you. You were supposed to be a means to an end." Ianto knew that there was no need to hold back the truth anymore. The end was nigh and he did not want to die with Jack hating him.

"A means to an end..." Jack trailed off. Hearing the admission caused anger to erupt for a second but it went as quickly as it came. He knew Ianto was sincere and did not want to admit he felt the same even in the face of death.

"It's my fault. I brought about the end of the world. Talk about fucking up big time."

"But it's my face that will be known as the one who destroyed Earth. I should have seen you were hurting. I only wanted see what was on the surface. The physical stuff was easy. I didn't want to look deeper."

"Neither did I. I thought it was for the best. I thought once Lisa was cured that we could disappear. I guess I just proved right every teacher I ever had that said I would never amount to anything but a screw up. I never thought I take the rest of the world down with me!"

"Your heart was in the right place. There was no way to know that they developed far enough to convert without cybernetics."

"If part of me was able to stay in my own body maybe there is part of you in yours and you can regain control and stop it."

"If I could I would have done it already. It has to be close to a week now." Jack had no sense of how long they had been locked up, but judging by the hunger pains he felt, a week was a good estimate.

"Quite the duo we are."

"That we are."

"Thank you for everything Jack."

"It was an honour knowing you, Ianto Jones."

"Like wise, sir."

The final curtain fell on the lives of Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones while the world outside burned and human life was erased and converted.


End file.
